Nature-Deficit Disorder?

Arnie Cooper’s interview with Richard Louv annoyed and frustrated me. As an environmentalist and teacher, I was deeply offended by his generalizations and blaming of organizations such as PETA, school districts, teachers, and environmental groups. I invite Louv to visit our new, open, elementary-school campus and witness the active role students play in learning about their immediate environment. I invite him to talk to our school district about the changes that have taken place in our wellness policies and how we encourage active and healthy lifestyles. I urge him to consider how beneficial San Dieguito Regional Park will be to people and creatures of all kinds for generations to come if we preserve the area rather than, as Louv suggests, build treehouses in it.

I was moved on so many levels by the interview with Richard Louv [“Nature-Deficit Disorder?” by Arnie Cooper, February 2007]. He makes a thoughtful and long-overdue case for children’s need to be in nature. And it’s not just children. I am reminded of a night last summer when I invited some city-dwelling friends to my farm to cook out over an open fire and watch the Perseids meteor shower. They all commented on how peaceful it was in the country. One of them noted the sound of crickets chirping and asked (seriously), “So, how long does that go on?”

As I read “Nature-Deficit Disorder?” my five-year-old daughter ran back and forth between her room and the yard with large, leafy branches ripped from a shrub. When I asked what she was doing, she replied, “I’m fixing things up to make them more real.”

My first response was to tell her to stop. All I saw was the mess, the dirt, the bugs, the denuded plant. But because I’d been reading the interview, I kept quiet. When she asked me to come see, I stood in awe of her work: leaf beds for stuffed animals, leaf tea cups for dolls sitting on leaf chairs, leaves sticking out of books on a shelf, a leaf highway under toy cars, leaves taped to the walls, and leaves laid on her bed in the shape of a heart.

Connecting to nature means playing in it. The branches of the shrub will grow back. I just hope my daughter will always want to make things “more real.”

Richard Louv says that children are obese today because they don’t spend enough time outdoors. I live in a lower-middle-class, inner-city Latino neighborhood, where children often play ball, jump rope, and ride bikes. I have even noticed chalk outlines of hopscotch on the sidewalk. The scene outside my windows reminds me of the life I led as a child in the fifties. Yet many of these children are overweight. To my mind this reflects our meat-based culture, where little boxes with burgers and toys in them have replaced staples like rice, beans, corn, tortillas, and fruit. Is it any wonder we have an obesity problem in this country? Lack of interaction with nature is not the primary culprit; the American diet is.